The Housing Bubble

The Billings Gazette reports from Montana. “Since Hassan Kangarloo swept into Billings last May to buy the bankrupt Northern Hotel, he has managed to tangle the relatively simple sale into a complex web of debts. The Livingston Guest House Motel would be gutted and remodeled into classy residential and office condos, Kangarloo said. The ground floor interior is unfinished and so are most of the condos. Half a dozen Montana contractors have filed liens to collect more than $207,000 in unpaid debts.”

“Kangarloo blames his troubles on Montana contractors he claims have overcharged or stolen from him, as well as the nation’s current stumbling economy. ‘Unfortunately, it’s not just me,’ he recently told The Gazette. ‘The entire nation is going through a tough time in the financial markets.I ‘ve got to stop some of these losses because they think that I’m a rich boy coming up from California.’”

“Meanwhile, Kangarloo has defaulted on a six-month loan and owes $600,000 to a company headed by city native Carter Boehm. ‘Hassan came to Montana thinking I jumped off a turnip truck,’ Boehm said. ‘What he didn’t know is I own a fleet of turnip trucks.’”

The Idaho Statesman. “Doug and Becky Langford have had their home in the Meridian Heights subdivision on the market for almost a year. Doug Langford, a financial adviser with Beneficial Financial Group, admits their first mistake was wasting the first six months trying to sell their 1,762-square-foot, ranch-style home themselves.”

“The couple, who have since moved to Ogden, Utah, are still making mortgage payments on the property. It has not received a single offer, despite the Langfords’ decision to slash the original $220,000 price to $209,000, he said.”

“‘And there’s a good chance that we’re going to cut the price again,’ Langford said.”

“Meanwhile, the couple, who are expecting their first child, are renting a basement apartment while they wait for their home to sell. But at $209,000, the house is still priced well above its assessed value of $185,000, according to the Ada County assessor’s office.”

“Langford said selling the house will not end his problems. He said the couple owe $225,000 on the home. They purchased it using an 80/20 financing plan that amounts to two mortgages.”

“So, if the Langfords sell for $200,000, they will still need to take out a $25,000 loan to pay off the second mortgage. ‘That’s why I listed it at the price I did,’ Langford said. ‘I didn’t want to take out a $25,000 loan, and get nothing for it.’”

The Oregonian. “Umpqua Bank followed the lead of several other Northwest banks Thursday and reported a big increase in troubled loans. The bank’s total nonperforming assets soared from $9 million a year ago to $98 million at the close of 2007.”

“The collapse of the housing bubble has taken a significant toll on Oregon banks, where loan loss provisions in the fourth quarter alone are approaching $80 million.”

“About 75 percent of the loans now lumped in the troubled category as nonperforming assets are loans to residential developers, said Ron Farnsworth, Umpqua’s senior VP for finance. Umpqua’s performance has been hurt by an ill-timed expansion into Northern California.”

“About 73 percent of the bank’s troubled loans are in California, Farnsworth said.”

The Bend Bulletin from Oregon. “A bank foreclosure on a 38-acre chunk of land in northeast Bend has dropped land costs to the point where a group of Bend developers say they’ll be able to sell new houses again this summer for as little as $189,900 apiece, or a little more than half the 2007 median Bend sale price of $349,000.”

“Whether buyers will buy remains to be seen: At the moment, they’re not snapping up Bend houses very quickly at any price.”

“Developer Jay Audia said he and his partners are confident that they’ve found a price range that will attract first-time buyers to a market that was skewed by a three-year bubble that pushed local home prices to record heights, at least partly due to soaring land prices.”

“‘I see a lot of people trying to find a bottom,’ Audia said Tuesday. ‘They’re dropping their prices maybe $5,000 here, then $10,000 there. But we’re jumping ahead of the market, and this is going to find the market.’”

The Register Guard from Oregon. “Some of Lane County’s housing sales figures for last year look pretty nasty — pending sales down 14.8 percent, closed deals down 11.7 percent.”

“While things aren’t as good as they were, they’re not as bad as they might have been, say Randal and Cindy Whipple, a husband-and-wife team of brokers in Eugene.”

“‘Like many other parts of the country, we have suffered some setbacks, some price erosion, in some areas,’ Randal Whipple said. ‘We did have about 40 percent (increase) over a three-year time period, and there’s no getting around it, in some segments of the market we’re seeing some lowering of prices.’”

“Rising and falling home prices don’t mean much to people who don’t plan to buy or sell a home, Cindy Whipple said.”

“For people in that situation, ‘the changes in price are like monopoly money,’ she said. ‘It’s just a question of, ‘Do I feel richer or poorer?’ but it doesn’t really change anything for them. It’s only meaningful if they decide to buy or sell property.’”

The Curry Pilot from Oregon. “‘It Does Not Get More Exciting!’ said Regional economist Dr. John Mitchell’s opening slide for his keynote address at the annual Business Outlook Conference. This year’s appearance by Mitchell was underwritten by Umpqua Bank.”

“Mitchell’s prediction was for continued economic expansion through 2008, including continued ’slow growth’ in Oregon.”

“Given the trouble with the housing industry, Mitchell spent time explaining how the housing boom has been unwinding. There have been declines in construction, lowering of prices, changes in expectations, changes in regulations and tighter credit.”

“‘Housing adjustment is underway,’ he said, ‘but not finished.’”

“‘For Curry County,’ he added in a local review, ‘I suspect the weakness of the California real estate market spills over to here, but remember that the baby boomers have started to retire.’”

The Oregon City News. “Despite years of planning, with visioning drawings of renovated buildings and tree-lined streets, the plan to revitalize Milwaukie’s downtown core might be less feasible than many in the city had hoped.”

“‘When you get into an area like the Pearl District where the achievable rate is $600 to $700 per square foot, you start to think that it’s because of mixed use’ amenities in the area, said Jerry Johnson, of Johnson Gardner LLC. ‘The belief is that if there’s amenities like grocers, theaters, night clubs close by, people will pay more for housing.’”

“‘Rent levels in the area are seen to be well below what is necessary to support mid-rise construction,’ the report said.”

“‘You want to make the area more attractive so you can charge more for the area. You can develop that by generating activity downtown so it’s a place people actually want to be,’ he said. ‘The problem is it’s the chicken and the egg – you’ve got to get people interested in investing downtown,’ but to do that you’ve got to get people downtown.”

The Daily News from Washington. “It’s been one year since developer Todd Nicholson offered the city of Kelso $1.1 million for 9 acres of riverfront property across from Three Rivers Golf Course, but the sale still hasn’t closed - and it may not for six months.”

“The cooling housing market has prompted Nicholson to retool his vision. His original plan was to build 240 upscale condominium units. Now, Nicholson thinks it would be ’safer’ to build 60 to 70 single-family, unattached townhouses on narrow lots ’so we can absorb two or three years of really horrible sales,’ he said.”

The News Tribune. from Washington. “The weakening housing market coupled with tighter financing standards took their toll this week on two major projects on Tacoma’s Thea Foss Waterway. Developer Bob Thurston has told the Foss board that his bank wants him to sell half of the condominiums before it releases construction funding for the building.”

“Thurston changed the design when the condo market in Tacoma and the nation was hot and the hotel market was lukewarm. With home sales now weakening, it would be easier to finance a building that had no condo component, he has said.”

“Regarding the proposed office-residential building near the bridge, Prium general counsel Matt Sweeney said the ‘tremendous uncertainty’ in the market is slowing Prium’s plan to build a new Foss building.”

“The developer hasn’t been pressuring the state to expedite permits because the market is weak, Sweeney said. ‘I didn’t see any advantage in saying run run run when things were getting bad bad bad,’ said Sweeney.”

The Olympian from Washington. “A free workshop Wednesday night will cover investment opportunities that can result from South Sound’s growing mortgage foreclosure trend. Thurston County auditor’s records show mortgage foreclosure notices rose to 662 last year, a 52 percent increase over the number in 2006.”

“‘A year ago, we would see only about four sales a month,’ said Paulette Roswall, branch manager of Liberty Financial Group in Tumwater. ‘Now we see four a week that go to foreclosure.’”

The Seattle PI from Washington. “Last year was, in many ways, two different years for the Seattle-area housing market. There’s one market from January through July, when steady year-over-year increases in home inventory and declining sales didn’t keep the median King County house price from posting double-digit increases.”

“Then came August, when skittish lenders tightened mortgage standards, making it harder to get a loan, and investors pulled out of the mortgage market.”

“King County had enough homes on the market in most of early 2007 to last less than three months, given the sales pace at the time. The supply topped six months in September through November and seven months in December.”

“December’s supply hit nearly nine months in Snohomish County, 11 months in Pierce County, 11.5 months in Kitsap County and 13 months in Skagit County.”

“The psychological effect of the credit crunch went beyond its actual effect, said Jill Jacobi Wood, president of Windermere Real Estate. ‘I just think the buyers just kind of went ’snap,’ deciding to wait for the market to bottom out, she said.”

“Glenn Crellin, director of the Washington Center for Real Estate Research at Washington State University, theorized that the median prices earlier in 2007 were masking some softness because buyers were getting more for their money, rather than spending less.”

“‘Finally, it got to the point where they were able to afford all they wanted and spend less money, too,’ he said.”